What's up with printing PDF's

[georgehobel]

I have learned a ton on Revit in this last year.  However, since most of it is through trial and error, my methods may not be the best practices at times.  Currently I'm getting fed up with printing my drawings to pdf's.  The system seems to get hung up too often, and sometimes I have to shut the program down and reboot.  I know that other people have had similar issues, but I am not sure of what solutions there are.  One tip that I have seen is to always print individual pdf files instead of having Revit produce one document with all of your selections in it.  Why..?? Why wont does it have to stall if I want them to be in one document.  Is there something I'm missing, a better way perhaps?  I dont mind selecting which views to print, but lately...especially with Revit 2019, I am getting hung up in the pdf printing process....

[Avaris.]

Yes, Revit is full of mysteries while printing PDF's. I was amazed by how often it just stops during the printing process. It is weird, but ctrl+p works (nearly) always. Don't know why, but it does.

[georgehobel]

AHHH  that makes sense.... my wife is always telling me to use [control P] in the morning....  🙂

[cbcarch]

Revit is a memory hog. And it is very finicky about graphics cards/drivers/print settings.

How much RAM does your PC have? On large/complex projects, if there is a lack of RAM, printing problems as you describe happen. Same with print drivers/graphics cards. These problems seem to worsen in large team settings with lots of users. If you are a single user, usually adding RAM and installing current graphics card drivers solves most of these type of problems.

[RobDraw]

Get a third party PDF program. A lot of places use Bluebeam. That might be a bit of overkill for you as it does way more than just generate nice PDFs but worth checking out, at least for the free trial to see if it does anything for your PDF woes. There are other less expensive ones, too.

[georgehobel]

I have been using Adobe Acrobat Pro DC because it was working well with AutoCAD.  There may be a better option for Revit though...???

[georgehobel]

ASUS, Q504UA

Intel Core i5-6200 CPU @ 2.30 GHz 24 GHz

12 GB RAM

64 BIT

My drawings are extreemly simple... this particular drawing set is a house less than 1000 sq ft.  very little detail... should not be overwhelming any system.  I do feel that Im ready to upgrade my system, but it shouldnt be stalling the way is has been.... am I wrong?

[Anonymous]

Check your printer properties for the resolution... should be around 600 or 1200dpi (1200 may be overkill too)....any more than that is not needed.

Also if you are editing your crop regions that will slow things down quite a bit too.  Although I have found that Bluebeam handles edited crop regions better than Adobe.

[cbcarch · Accepted solution]

-IMHO--12 GB is not enough--even for small jobs. Since RAM is very inexpensive, doubling it to 24 GB will make a huge performance difference at a low cost--and a better experience when running Revit, and having other apps/programs running as well. The $ are well worth it.

-As far as printing PDFs goes--also check your settings such as Raster vs Vector, High Quality vs Presentation, etc.

You have to experiment with it a bit.

-Even on a small project, you can have a Sheet with a view on it with lots of detail, fill patterns, shadows, and other graphics which will require a lot of RAM when printing. So it's not really "project size"--it's more about how "dense" the graphics are on the Sheet/View you are printing.

[georgehobel]

Everybody has offered some great advice here today... very helpful..

I think I'm going to check on some more RAM to start with...

[barthbradley · Accepted solution]

@georgehobel: Am I reading you right? Your wife is telling you to use "[control P]" in the morning?  

...hmm; I must be missing that page.  

[georgehobel]

Well... going to need to upgrade my laptop... i cannot add RAM.  However, I tried using the microsoft print to pdf option in the drop down menu... I was able to quickly print a pdf, single document of all seven sheets.  No issues.

[ToanDN]

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@georgehobel wrote:

Well... going to need to upgrade my laptop... i cannot add RAM.  However, I tried using the microsoft print to pdf option in the drop down menu... I was able to quickly print a pdf, single document of all seven sheets.  No issues.

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Microsoft Print to PDF only prints to 11x17 max.  If you need larger sizes then you are toasted.  Use CTRL+ P instead of the print button will likely fix 96.7% of the hang ups.

[georgehobel]

[Control P] is just the keystrokes to the same output screen you get when you select the printer at the top menu bar.  From there I get the drop down choices of my Adobe PDF, Microsoft PDF, my office printer, or fax.  True, I can see that the microsoft pdf creator is limited in the size of print, whereas my Adobe PDF has all the options for sizes.  hmmmmmm.

Thank you for your input.

George

[ToanDN]

Somehow initiate the command by the keystroke works most of the times when doing it by the button fails. This a known fact. Search this forum you shall see.

[Archigrafix_Norge]

Hi George

We have a small suggestion. Have a try of Docuflow 2.1.

It is faster than any other app to create PDFs in Revit. We can even assist you here on how to use it.

[benjaminrossetti5M7MY]

I've tried for months to figure out why Revit cannot print a multiple sheet pdf. It's a basic, daily requirement for almost all architects. But sure enough, Ctrl-P seems to work. That's so weird. Thanks for the tip!!!

[johalloran27WY9]

hi was wondering if anyone has any ideas why this is happening on the rhs is my revit file with thinlines turned off showing "what" id like to see when printed...... all lines weights are set to the lowest 0.025mm thickness scale 1:100 when i print i get whats on the LHS lines are way too thick ....is it the pdf printer..... im using pdf creator ....and printing to A3 .... why wont revit print whats on the screen on the rhs ??

[RobDraw]

It appears that you are printing a different view with different settings. There are objects that aren't printing that are visible. 

Start a new thread instead of jumping into one that is marked as solved. Include a model exhibiting the behavior if possible. 

[johalloran27WY9]

thanks rob ill do that